Photo of the Day (9.28.08)

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Oh great, Gadling is picking Halloween photos already!? Thankfully not. Flickr user arunchs captured this fearsome character in the far northern reaches of India. My first reaction was very much a visceral one – I was particularly taken by the mask’s bold red color, spindly dark horns and striking, hypnotic eyes.

But my second reaction was one of curiosity. For what purpose is our subject wearing this headgarb? From what I can tell in arunchs’ caption, the mask is typically worn during a Cham Dance ritual, a Buddhist ceremony involving elaborate dances and “moral instruction.” Though the dance is most common among the Buddhists of Tibet, the photo’s caption indicates it was taken in Keylong, an Indian city near the Tibetan border.

Have any pictures of fearsome ceremonial masks from your travels? Or even just some fearsome snorkel gear? Why not share it with us by adding it our Gadling pool on Flickr? We might just pick it as our Photo of the Day.

Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern: Goa, the spice of life

by Jamie Rhein on

From the first shot of Goa in this week’s episode of Bizarre Foods, I could smell the aromas. And that’s a good thing. Although Zimmern said that the food in Goa is different than many parts of India, in New Delhi where I lived for two years, every spicy, sweet and sour taste that Zimmern mentioned could be found. That’s because New Delhi was filled with people who started out somewhere else. For those who like taste variety, India is heaven, and Zimmern once again showed how.

What I liked about this episode is that anyone heading to Goa can find the food that Zimmern ate without spending much money. He went to simple places in each location he visited. And, although he did touch on the unusual foods, it was mostly the cooking methods and not weird ingredients that carried the episode. Goa became an inviting backdrop for eating pleasure. Instead of thinking, “Oh, gad!” I wanted a bite– or twelve.

In Goa, a state colonized by the Portuguese, and described by Zimmern as a hippie hangout in the 60s and 70s that still teams with tourists, Zimmern walked through Mapusa Market as the camera panned and periodically lingered on sacks of spices followed by piles of various fruits. Along with the variety in the smells and flavors of the bounty is a vibrant color palate which is probably why camera shots of spices were popular throughout this episode.

First up– a lesson in curry. As Zimmern pointed out, curry is a blend of spices that goes much further than what Westerners know as curry powder. In India, curry is called masala. When the tasting started Zimmern honed in on a couple of dishes that make Indian cuisine unique.

Pickled mango was one of them. Mango, a usually sweet fruit is turned sour by being kept in salt. One of my favorite relishes, mango pickle is often found on restaurant tables similar to how a bottle of ketchup is a condiment in the United States. My favorite Indian restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico when I lived there was the Indian Kitchen. There was always a jar of mango pickle at the ready. I’d eat it like candy.

For his market grazing, Zimmern also sampled bora berry, a small light brownish-yellowish fruit, about the size of a grape that he said was “slimy goo, sour and disgusting.” Must be an acquired taste. As the guide who was showing Zimmern around said, children love them. Passion fruit Zimmern liked.

At a sausage seller, he sampled chouricos, a sausage made of pig meat that includes organs and is mixed with hot spices and stuffed inside pig intestines. Instead of intestines, Zimmern said guts. Using pig intestines as sausage casing is actually not that unusual. Say guts and it sounds gross.

The next dish, mackerel soaked up to a year in masala sauce, is unusual. Zimmern offered to eat it raw, but the guide told him absolutely not. It’s fried first and she sent him off to Republic Noodle, a small restaurant near the market to be cooked before he became sick for sure. “This could have been my last Bizarre Foods,” he quipped.

The cooked mackerel wasn’t fabulous. “This smells like lime soaked in ammonia,” he said before taking a bite. “Wow. That’s sour and fishy. You can’t even cut this thing with a knife.” Sounds like a food to stay away from unless you’re really, really, really hungry. Still, for people who live through monsoons, this method for preserving foods comes in handy.

In Panaji the capital of Goa, the architecture reflects the Portuguese colonial influence–so does the cuisine. Vindaloo, a signature dish of Goa, reflects the influence. I’ve eaten chicken vindaloo many times, but didn’t know it came from the Portuguese. Vindaloo, as Zimmern pointed out, is a way of preparing a sauce that includes vegetables, various spices, vinegar and red hot peppers, making it one of the hottest dishes in Indian cuisine. He ate his version at the restaurant in the Hotel Venite. “Spicy. Tomatoey. Strong vinegar backbone. Boy, that’s some serious warm heat,” he declared. Vindaloo can be made with pork, fish and beef as well.

Zimmern’s meal also included hilsa fish roe. The roe–fish eggs–were in a ring that had been steamed, chilled, sliced, and rolled into corn flour. “This is absolutely the definition of dry mealy food,” said Zimmern before he ate a bite of vindaloo as a chaser. Throw some mango pickle on the roe and it might be good?

At another restaurant, Mum’s Kitchen, there is the concept of making Indian food as Indian moms might make it. The idea is to “make sure the right way to do something doesn’t disappear” by adding a mother’s touch into the dishes.”

Here chicken can’t get any fresher. The chicken is killed on the spot and is plucked, cleaned, cut up and cooking in minutes. Zimmern pronounced the dish, chicken xacuiti delicious. Since it’s from marinating chicken in a masala mixture of cumin, curry leaves, coconut and red chilies, I’d second that. It didn’t sound weird, and besides, moms cooked it.

Even the most unusual dish on the menu, Bombay Duck, was tasty despite sounding awful. The duck isn’t duck, but a type of soft boned fish with lizard qualities. The story goes that the name comes from the British who said the fish’s smell reminded them of a crowded train car of the Bombay line.

Next on Zimmern’s Goa jaunt was a trip to Calangute Beach. Here, wood-fired tandori ovens are used for cooking which gives meat and bread a smokey flavor. At one simple restaurant, 100 yards off the ocean with jet skis in the background, Zimmern ate tandoori-style fish after mentioning that there are miles and miles of beaches in Goa, so fish is a-plenty.

Zimmern’s eating at this beach made me want to head to the Asian food store closest to my house to buy a bag of Indian snack food. After eating a chick pea sandwich, Zimmern sampled a snack mixture of puffed wheat, chick peas raisins and spices.

As he said, “Even the simpliest food are seasoned so well. You feel like the most humble foods have been transformed.” If you’ve never eaten Indian snacks, buy some, but be careful about the hot factor. The packaging will say if a food is hot or mild. If it says hot, believe it.

Another tasty treat with a wicked kick was the deep fried chili fritters with chili puree on top. Don’t do what Zimmern did and glop on the puree. “That was a really dumb idea. In a little while I’ll have to peel my taste buds off that cloud up there,” Zimmern said about his mouth explosion.

To get away from the tourists, Zimmern suggested Arambol Beach where you can sunbath with the cows. With white sand beaches and the ocean offering a place for relaxation, shack-like restaurants were the setting for Zimmern’s fish feast. Fish is cooked up on a propane grill.

The flat spiny pomfret that Zimmern ate is a white fish variety that is cross-hatched before it is grilled so that will come apart in pieces making eating it with ones fingers easy. The king prawns were also grilled. At this point, I’m thinking, shoot yes, that I’m hungry.

Next stop was Sahakari Spice Farm where there are at least 100 different types of plants. This section was a great lesson in where the ingredients in spice bottles come from. As this section illustrated, in addition to jazzing up food, spices also foster good health.

The man giving Zimmern the tour said that black pepper acts as a laxative and cinnamon takes care of cholesterol, for example.

The farm was also a place for highlighting the labor intensive harvesting practices, like when the guy shimmied up coconut and betel nut trees to get the good stuff.

To get to his next eating place, Zimmern took a ride in a rough hewn wooden boat on the Mondovi River where sand bars makes travel tricky and in spots crocodiles infest the waters.

In a private home, Zimmern ate sorpotel, a dish common to weddings. With pork as the main ingredient, it was cooked in a large pot over an open fire nto a dish flavored with Kashmiri chili, onions, ginger, cardamom and cinnamon. Yum. (Except I could do without knowing that blood is used for a thickening agent.)

The last part of this episode was my favorite and worth its own post. Stay tuned for Andrew Zimmern’s trip to the Ayurvedic Natural Health Center which made me laugh out loud. It involved oil, heat, a broken chair and cow’s urine.

(photos of market and Zimmern from Bizarre Foods Web site.)

A Circle of Peace: A 9/11 story the year after

by Jamie Rhein on

There are moments in life that ververberate like the sound after a Tibetan singing bowl is struck with a mallet. The sound moves outward and outward and outward–hopefully evoking good and centering force in the universe.

Sometimes in travel, there are those experiences where you notice how diverse the crowd is and how well folks are getting along. This is where Louis Amstrong’s song “It’s a Wonderful World” would play if life really was a musical.

Those moments can feel like healing for those times when people don’t get along. At least that’s how it is with me.

There is a room of New Delhi called the Hall of Peace where middle schoolers gather once a week for the school assembly. Dozens of nationalities are represented, and these are kids who will eventually move on in the world with visions of the world’s people in the make up of their skin.

On September 11, 2002, this is what happened there. The result was as if someone struck a singing bowl. This day each year, I can hear its sound.

[Continue reading for the reason why.]

Art of Diversity forms a Circle of Peace

At 3:35 on that Wednesday afternoon, the time students generally rush out the doors, middle schoolers at the American Embassy School in New Delhi needed to be reminded it was time to leave. They were gathered in the Hall of Peace, the school’s main meeting place where flags of many of the nearly 60 students’ nationalities hang.

On this particular Wednesday, a year from the day that students wondered if it was still safe to go to school, these adolescents transformed the H.O.P. with art. On September 11, 2002, nothing was said about the horrific occurrence of planes crashing, buildings falling and people dying.

Nothing was said about worries and fears. Not a word about what would happen if India and Pakistan do not resolve their differences, or if Israel and Palestine do not resolve theirs, or what will happen if the US does follow through with its threats to attack Iraq.

Terrorists had no place in the Hall of Peace on this day. But, children, their teachers, their support staff, and their principal did. At 3:35, gathered in a circle that no one told them to form, they were looking at doves. Not just a few doves, but more than 100. These were large, flat, wooden cutouts that each student, along with a partner, had just finished painting minutes earlier.

This school in New Delhi exists mainly for the expatriate community’s children whose parents, from various countries and for various reasons, work in India. The people who go there to teach and learn recognize that its population looks like a miniature UN. On a few occasions, the power and wonder of this mix connect together.

On September 11, 2002, through this middle school-wide project, art teacher Anja Palombo brought nations together. It only took the use of the school cafeteria, a dozen teachers, support staff, 210 students and an open-minded principal, all armed with acrylic paint, brushes and pre-cut , flat wooden doves to create a world vision where only peace has a chance.

Symbols like olive branches, Om and peace signs and hearts echoed the words that other students chose. “Heal Thy Environment,” “Harmony,” and “Peace is Hope” were written in English. Other messages were written in languages such as Hindi, Chinese and Danish.

With their bursts of blended colours from pastels to almost neon, and small glued-on mirrors, symbols and words, the doves took on personalities as varied as the students who painted them. Students like Kina, Prashant, Masetle, Fatimah, Soo Young, Beth and Tamas Pataky, worked with heads bent together in a buzz of festive activity.

Creating peace is not particularly quiet. Sometimes it involves moving about a spacious room filled with tables, choosing paint carefully and discussing ideas. It means making space at a table for any Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Hindu or Muslim to join in. It also involves allowing for participation of those with varied abilities, even those who take longer to come up with an idea. But, eventually, the ideas do come, and the collective whole becomes more than just any one person’s vision.

When students stood in the Hall of Peace looking at the doves they carried from the cafeteria on that recent Wednesday, the excitement was not just at seeing their dove amongst the others. It was in seeing the diversity. No two doves looked alike, not even if they were made from the same shaped cutout.

Peace as a collective contains many versions. The doves, now mounted on H.O.P.’s walls, seem as if they are soaring and dancing with each other under the nations’ flags. When people come to this gathering place, they do not find the danger of terrorism. Instead, what they find is a circle of peace.

[The original article was submitted to The Times of India who printed it. I adjusted the paragraphing to make it easier to read here and adjusted some wording.

Many of the students who were in this room are now in their first years of college.]

Fungus in plane ketchup and air conditioning. Tutut.

by Abha Malpani on

Two fungus-in-aircraft stories are worth note and worry: An Indian Airlines flight served a passenger snacks with ketchup that had fungus on it. The passenger noted the contaminated packet and made a complaint, the airline dutifully apologized.

Fungus can be hazardous to health and can cause allergies, asthma, and even cardiac arrest. There would probably have been a grand issue should the fungus-ketchup have been consumed by a child or an elderly person. The airline said that they will investigate the situation and the suppliers from which they receive products.

That’s all fine but I don’t understand how the cabin crew member who served the fungus laden ketchup, didn’t notice it. And, if the fungus is on the pouch of the ketchup, it’s probably because it’s old and/or expired, which has nothing to do with the supplier. This was an easily avoidable situation.

Another fungus situation was in Ryanair: A flight from Hungary to Ireland had to divert because fungus laden ice started to drip onto a passenger from an overhead locker, triggering an allergic reaction in the passenger who started coughing. It was discovered that the fungus had contaminated the aircraft’s air conditioning system.

Thanks to jackhynes for the flickr photo.

Behind the Olympics: Where are all of India’s medals?

by Aaron Hotfelder on

So far this Olympics, Indian athletes have garnered a grand total of one medal– a gold in the 10-meter men’s air rifle event (whatever that is). This matches the total number of medals India earned during the entire 2004 Games– one silver in men’s double trap shooting.

For a warm-weather country of 1.1 billion, you’d think India might fare better than this. So where are all India’s medals? Here are a couple possible explanations:

1. Cricket is not an Olympic sport. In many ways, cricket is to India what baseball is to the United States. It is the country’s most popular sport, and India’s national team is consistently one of the best in the world. But cricket games can last for days, and this does not lend itself to Olympic competition. There may be hope, though: Some are suggesting that a shorter version of cricket called Twenty20 should be added to the 2020 Olympics.

2. Many Indians eat strictly vegetarian diets. In many ways, vegetarianism is just as healthy– if not more so– than a diet that includes meat. But vegetarian diets can also be lower in protein, which is important in muscle development. About a third of India’s population are vegetarians.

3. Much of India is still poor. Though India’s economy is developing rapidly, much of its population remains poor. In general, people are only free to pursue athletics once they’ve achieved a certain standard of living. But this does not explain why countries like China, Romania, and North Korea are still able to do well in the medal count.

4. India’s government has nothing to prove. Tyler Cowen writes in his post on the same topic that the dearth of medals can largely be explained by a “lack of government subsidies, combined with the possibility that non-democratic, authoritarian governments feel greater need to prove themselves on the international stage and to their people at home.” This would explain why places like China and North Korea do well– they subsidize Olympic training, and they view the Olympics as a place to prove their worth. India’s government feels no such pressure.

5. Indian parents encourage academics over sports. Much of the reason India is developing so rapidly is because of the emphasis its government, and its people, have placed on education. Many Indian parents realize that the best way to help their children is to make sure they get an education, and yes, sometimes time studying must come at the expense of sports.

Be sure to check out Tyler Cowen’s post for a few more explanations.